Tasks alphabetically¶

All 106 tasks in name order, each with the paradigm family it is filed under. Tasks by paradigm family presents the same tasks grouped by family.

Affective Picture Viewing ¶

Passive or instructed viewing of emotionally valenced images (IAPS, GAPED, NAPS, OASIS) while physiological, neural, or rating responses to valence and arousal are recorded. Filed under Emotion elicitation and regulation tasks; engages 6 processes.

Affective Priming ¶

Target evaluation (good/bad) preceded by a briefly presented affective prime; response facilitation on congruent trials indexes automatic evaluation. Filed under Emotion elicitation and regulation tasks; engages 5 processes.

Anti-Saccade ¶

Participants must suppress a prepotent saccade toward a peripheral cue and generate a voluntary saccade to the opposite location; errors and saccade latency index oculomotor inhibition. Filed under Response inhibition and stopping tasks; engages 6 processes.

Artificial Grammar Learning ¶

Exposure to letter strings generated by a finite-state grammar followed by a grammaticality judgment on novel strings; indexes implicit rule learning. Filed under Conditioning, reinforcement and implicit learning tasks; engages 4 processes.

Attention Network ¶

Identify the direction of a central arrow flanked by congruent or incongruent arrows, preceded by various cue types; RT differences across cue and flanker conditions index three independent attention networks (alerting, orienting, executive). Filed under Attentional cueing and orienting tasks; engages 6 processes.

Auditory Masking ¶

Detect, discriminate, or identify a target sound in the presence of a masking sound; threshold shifts between masked and unmasked conditions index frequency selectivity, temporal resolution, and auditory scene analysis. Filed under Perceptual judgment and psychophysics tasks; engages 4 processes.

Autobiographical Memory ¶

Participants retrieve specific personal memories in response to cue words or structured prompts; specificity, detail, and temporal distribution of retrieved episodes index autobiographical memory function. Filed under Recall and recognition memory tests; engages 4 processes.

Balloon Analog Risk ¶

Sequential pumping of a virtual balloon for monetary reward with stochastic popping; average pumps per un-popped balloon indexes risk-taking. Filed under Reward, risk and value-based choice tasks; engages 5 processes.

Biological Motion Perception ¶

Judgment of human action or identity from sparse point-light displays attached to major joints; indexes recognition of biological motion from kinematic cues alone. Filed under Perceptual judgment and psychophysics tasks; engages 5 processes.

Body Ownership Illusion ¶

Synchronous multisensory stimulation of a participant’s hidden body part and a visible fake or virtual counterpart induces illusory ownership of the artificial body part; proprioceptive drift, subjective ratings, and threat responses index the strength of the illusion. Filed under Metacognition, agency and interoception tasks; engages 3 processes.

Cambridge Face Memory ¶

Learn target faces across viewpoints, then identify them among distractors under increasingly difficult conditions (novel viewpoints, visual noise); accuracy indexes face recognition ability and configural face processing. Filed under Recall and recognition memory tests; engages 5 processes.

Causal Learning ¶

Participants observe cue-outcome pairings across trials and judge the causal strength of the relationship; judgment profiles across contingency conditions index causal induction and associative learning mechanisms. Filed under Conditioning, reinforcement and implicit learning tasks; engages 4 processes.

Change Detection ¶

Brief sample array followed after a blank delay by a probe array; participant reports whether any item changed. Yields visual working memory capacity (K). Filed under Short-term and working memory tasks; engages 4 processes.

Contextual Cueing ¶

Visual search in which some distractor configurations repeat across blocks; faster search on repeated configurations indexes implicit spatial context learning. Filed under Visual search and tracking tasks; engages 4 processes.

Continuous Performance ¶

Extended stream of stimuli in which a rare target requires a response; omission and commission errors index sustained attention and response control. Filed under Oddball, vigilance and continuous performance tasks; engages 5 processes.

Corsi Block-Tapping ¶

Experimenter taps a sequence on spatially arranged blocks; participant reproduces the sequence forward or backward. Indexes visuospatial short-term and working memory span. Filed under Short-term and working memory tasks; engages 4 processes.

Delay Discounting ¶

Repeated choices between smaller-sooner and larger-later rewards at varying delays; indifference points estimate a temporal discount function. Filed under Reward, risk and value-based choice tasks; engages 5 processes.

Delayed Match-to-Sample ¶

Sample stimulus followed by a delay and then a probe or choice array; response indicates whether the probe matches the sample. Indexes short-term memory maintenance. Filed under Short-term and working memory tasks; engages 4 processes.

Dictator Game ¶

One-shot allocation task in which a proposer unilaterally divides an endowment between self and a passive receiver; indexes altruism and social preferences. Filed under Social cognition and social choice tasks; engages 4 processes.

Digit Span ¶

Auditory or visual digit sequences reproduced in forward or backward order; longest correctly reproduced length indexes verbal short-term and working memory span. Filed under Short-term and working memory tasks; engages 5 processes.

Digit Symbol Substitution ¶

Timed paper-and-pencil or computerized task: substitute digits for symbols (or vice versa) using a visible key; items completed in a fixed interval index processing speed. Filed under Motor performance and speeded response tasks; engages 5 processes.

Directed Forgetting ¶

Study-phase cues instruct participants to remember or forget specific items or lists; later memory tests index intentional forgetting. Filed under Memory control and prospective memory tasks; engages 5 processes.

Dot-Probe ¶

A pair of cues (often threat/neutral) is followed by a probe at one cue location; RT difference by cue type indexes attentional bias. Filed under Attentional cueing and orienting tasks; engages 5 processes.

Effort-Based Decision-Making ¶

Participants choose between a low-effort/low-reward option and a high-effort/high-reward option on each trial; the indifference point indexes effort discounting and motivational willingness to exert effort for reward. Filed under Reward, risk and value-based choice tasks; engages 5 processes.

Emotion Regulation ¶

View affective images under instructions to reappraise or passively view; self-reported affect, physiological responses, and neural activity index emotion regulation ability. Filed under Emotion elicitation and regulation tasks; engages 5 processes.

Emotional Stroop ¶

Color-naming of emotionally valenced words; RT slowing on threat-related words indexes attentional bias to affective content. Filed under Conflict and interference tasks; engages 5 processes.

Eriksen Flanker ¶

A central target flanked by congruent or incongruent distractors; RT and error differences index selective attention and conflict resolution. Filed under Conflict and interference tasks; engages 5 processes.

Face Processing ¶

Blocked or event-related presentation of faces vs. objects (or scrambled faces) to localize face-selective cortical regions (FFA, OFA, pSTS). Filed under Perceptual judgment and psychophysics tasks; engages 3 processes.

Facial Emotion Recognition ¶

Identification of an emotion category from a face image; accuracy and RT per emotion index emotion decoding ability. Filed under Emotion elicitation and regulation tasks; engages 4 processes.

False Belief ¶

Wimmer & Perner–style narrative in which a protagonist holds a belief the participant knows to be false; correct prediction of the protagonist’s action indexes mentalizing. Filed under Social cognition and social choice tasks; engages 4 processes.

Feeling-of-Knowing ¶

After failing to recall a studied item, participants rate the likelihood they could recognize the answer; the accuracy of these predictions (gamma correlation with recognition) indexes metacognitive monitoring of unretrieved memory. Filed under Metacognition, agency and interoception tasks; engages 4 processes.

Finger Tapping ¶

Repetitive single-finger or sequence tapping at fastest or paced rates; taps-per-interval and tap-timing variability index motor speed and rhythm control. Filed under Motor performance and speeded response tasks; engages 4 processes.

Fixate ¶

Participant holds gaze on a fixation target for a block with nothing else to process or do; used as a baseline or control block and to limit eye movement. Filed under Pseudo tasks: rest, fixation and self-report blocks; engages no process links (pseudo task).

Free Recall ¶

Study of a list of items followed by unaided recall in any order; serial-position curves dissociate primacy and recency. Filed under Recall and recognition memory tests; engages 6 processes.

Go/No-Go ¶

Responses required to frequent “go” stimuli must be withheld on rare “no-go” stimuli; commission errors and N2/P3 ERPs index response inhibition. Filed under Response inhibition and stopping tasks; engages 5 processes.

Heartbeat Detection ¶

Participants count or discriminate their own heartbeats without external feedback; the correspondence between perceived and actual heartbeat counts (or discrimination accuracy) indexes interoceptive sensitivity. Filed under Metacognition, agency and interoception tasks; engages 3 processes.

Imitation-Inhibition ¶

Execute an instructed finger movement while observing a congruent or incongruent action performed by another person; the congruency effect (faster responses on congruent trials) indexes automatic imitation and the cost of inhibiting observed-action representations. Filed under Conflict and interference tasks; engages 3 processes.

Implicit Association ¶

Speeded categorization of stimuli belonging to two target concepts and two evaluative attributes using shared response keys; congruence-condition RT difference indexes implicit association. Filed under Conflict and interference tasks; engages 6 processes.

Instrumental Conditioning ¶

Actions are reinforced by contingent outcomes under defined schedules; response rate and choice probability across schedules index instrumental learning. Specific human instantiations include lever/button-press reward paradigms and free-operant tasks. Filed under Conditioning, reinforcement and implicit learning tasks; engages 5 processes.

Intentional Binding ¶

Participants judge the perceived time of a voluntary action and/or its sensory effect using a Libet clock; the temporal compression between action and effect (intentional binding) indexes the implicit sense of agency. Filed under Metacognition, agency and interoception tasks; engages 3 processes.

Iowa Gambling ¶

Repeated choices among four decks with hidden reward and loss distributions; preference shift toward advantageous decks indexes affective decision making. Filed under Reward, risk and value-based choice tasks; engages 6 processes.

Judgment-of-Learning ¶

After studying each item, participants predict the likelihood they will recall it on a later test; calibration and resolution of these predictions index metacognitive monitoring of encoding. Filed under Metacognition, agency and interoception tasks; engages 4 processes.

Lexical Decision ¶

Speeded word/nonword judgment; RT and accuracy index lexical access and are sensitive to frequency, priming, and context. Filed under Language comprehension and production tasks; engages 5 processes.

Mental Rotation ¶

Judgment of whether two rotated objects are identical or mirror images; RT scales linearly with angular disparity, indexing mental rotation. Filed under Spatial cognition and navigation tasks; engages 4 processes.

Mirror Tracing ¶

Tracing of a figure viewed only in a mirror; error and completion time across trials index visuomotor adaptation and procedural learning. Filed under Motor performance and speeded response tasks; engages 5 processes.

Mismatch Negativity ¶

Passive auditory oddball in which rare deviant sounds elicit a negative ERP around 150–250 ms, indexing pre-attentive auditory change detection. Filed under Oddball, vigilance and continuous performance tasks; engages 4 processes.

Mnemonic Similarity ¶

Incidental encoding of images followed by a test with old, new, and lure items; discrimination of lures from repetitions indexes pattern separation. Filed under Recall and recognition memory tests; engages 6 processes.

Monetary Incentive Delay ¶

Cue predicts potential monetary gain or loss; speeded target response determines outcome. Striatal activity to cues indexes reward anticipation. Filed under Reward, risk and value-based choice tasks; engages 4 processes.

Motor Sequence Learning ¶

Repeated execution of a fixed finger sequence; within- and across-session speed and accuracy changes index motor skill learning. Filed under Motor performance and speeded response tasks; engages 5 processes.

Multi-Armed Bandit ¶

Repeated choice among options with unknown or changing reward distributions; choice sequences dissociate exploration from exploitation. Filed under Conditioning, reinforcement and implicit learning tasks; engages 5 processes.

Multiple Object Tracking ¶

Participants track a subset of identical moving objects among distractors for several seconds; tracking accuracy indexes sustained multifocal attention. Filed under Visual search and tracking tasks; engages 5 processes.

N-Back ¶

Continuous stream in which each item must be compared to the one n items back; accuracy and RT index working memory updating and monitoring. Filed under Short-term and working memory tasks; engages 5 processes.

Navon ¶

Hierarchical letters in which large letters are composed of small ones; RT differences between global and local identification index attentional scope. Filed under Conflict and interference tasks; engages 4 processes.

Oddball ¶

Sequence of standards with rare deviants or targets; deviants elicit a large positive ERP around 300 ms (P3a/P3b), indexing attention and context updating. Filed under Oddball, vigilance and continuous performance tasks; engages 5 processes.

Old/New Recognition Memory ¶

Studied items mixed with new lures at test; hit and false-alarm rates yield d’ and can be decomposed into recollection and familiarity via ROC or remember/know. Filed under Recall and recognition memory tests; engages 6 processes.

Operation Span ¶

Alternating arithmetic verification and word/letter memory items; complex-span score indexes working memory capacity under processing load. Filed under Short-term and working memory tasks; engages 5 processes.

Paired Associates Learning ¶

Study of cue-target pairs followed by cued recall; proportion recalled indexes associative encoding and retrieval. Filed under Recall and recognition memory tests; engages 5 processes.

Pavlovian Fear Conditioning ¶

A neutral CS is paired with an aversive US (shock, loud sound); conditioned responses (SCR, startle, amygdala BOLD) index fear learning. Filed under Conditioning, reinforcement and implicit learning tasks; engages 5 processes.

Phonological Awareness ¶

Rhyme judgment, phoneme deletion, or phoneme blending tasks index sensitivity to the sound structure of language. Filed under Language comprehension and production tasks; engages 4 processes.

Picture Naming ¶

Naming of pictured objects; RT and errors index lexical retrieval and are sensitive to name agreement, frequency, and age of acquisition. Filed under Language comprehension and production tasks; engages 6 processes.

Posner Spatial Cueing ¶

A central or peripheral cue indicates the likely target location; RT differences between valid, neutral, and invalid cues index covert spatial orienting. Filed under Attentional cueing and orienting tasks; engages 5 processes.

Prisoner’s Dilemma ¶

Two-player one-shot or iterated game with cooperate/defect choices and asymmetric payoffs; choice patterns index cooperation and strategic reasoning. Filed under Social cognition and social choice tasks; engages 6 processes.

Probabilistic Classification Learning ¶

Multi-cue probabilistic prediction of a binary outcome with trial-by-trial feedback; learning curves index gradual procedural category learning. Filed under Conditioning, reinforcement and implicit learning tasks; engages 5 processes.

Probabilistic Selection ¶

Learn to choose between stimulus pairs through probabilistic feedback, then select among novel recombinations; choose-A vs. avoid-B accuracy dissociates positive and negative reinforcement learning. Filed under Conditioning, reinforcement and implicit learning tasks; engages 5 processes.

Prospective Memory ¶

Participants perform an ongoing task while remembering to execute a deferred intention when a target event occurs (event-based) or after a time interval (time-based); PM hit rate indexes the ability to remember to remember. Filed under Memory control and prospective memory tasks; engages 4 processes.

Psychological Refractory Period ¶

Two tasks presented with a short SOA; RT for the second task lengthens as SOA shortens, indexing a central response-selection bottleneck. Filed under Motor performance and speeded response tasks; engages 4 processes.

Psychomotor Vigilance ¶

Simple reaction to visual or auditory stimuli appearing at random intervals over 5–10 minutes; mean RT, lapses, and false starts index sustained attention. Filed under Oddball, vigilance and continuous performance tasks; engages 4 processes.

Random Dot Kinematogram ¶

A field of moving dots in which a variable fraction move coherently; direction judgments and RT under varying coherence support drift-diffusion modeling of perceptual decisions. Filed under Perceptual judgment and psychophysics tasks; engages 5 processes.

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation ¶

A rapid stream of visual items is presented at a single location (typically 6-20 items/second); participants detect one or more targets among distractors. Target detection accuracy, especially for a second target shortly after a first (attentional blink), indexes temporal attention allocation. Filed under Oddball, vigilance and continuous performance tasks; engages 7 processes.

Raven’s Progressive Matrices ¶

Matrix completion items requiring induction of a rule from a 3x3 array of figures; items correct is a standard measure of non-verbal reasoning. Filed under Rule use, planning and reasoning tasks; engages 5 processes.

Reading the Mind in the Eyes ¶

Choice of the best-matching mental-state word for a photograph of the eye region; accuracy indexes complex emotion and mental-state inference. Filed under Social cognition and social choice tasks; engages 4 processes.

Remember/Know ¶

Classify recognition hits as ‘remember’ (vivid recollection) or ‘know’ (familiarity without context); proportions index the relative contributions of recollection and familiarity to recognition memory. Filed under Recall and recognition memory tests; engages 5 processes.

Remote Associates ¶

Three cue words linked to a single fourth word; solution rate and solution time index semantic search and insight. Filed under Rule use, planning and reasoning tasks; engages 4 processes.

Rest ¶

Participant stays awake, still and unoccupied for a block of several minutes while spontaneous activity is recorded; the block is a baseline for task blocks or a resting-state recording in its own right. Filed under Pseudo tasks: rest, fixation and self-report blocks; engages no process links (pseudo task).

Reversal Learning ¶

After initial stimulus-reward learning, the contingencies switch; perseveration and reversal speed index behavioral flexibility. Filed under Conditioning, reinforcement and implicit learning tasks; engages 4 processes.

Rey Auditory Verbal Learning ¶

Repeated presentation of a 15-word list with immediate free recall over five trials, an interference list, and delayed recall; indexes verbal learning and forgetting. Filed under Recall and recognition memory tests; engages 7 processes.

Self-Paced Reading ¶

Participants press a key to reveal each word or phrase of a sentence/passage; reading time per region indexes online processing difficulty and is sensitive to syntactic, semantic, and discourse-level manipulations. Filed under Language comprehension and production tasks; engages 4 processes.

Self-Referential Encoding ¶

Participants judge whether trait adjectives describe themselves vs. another person or a semantic property; the self-reference effect (superior recall for self-encoded items) and endorsement patterns index self-concept and self-referential processing. Filed under Memory control and prospective memory tasks; engages 4 processes.

Semantic Priming ¶

Lexical or semantic decision on targets preceded by semantically related or unrelated primes; RT facilitation indexes automatic semantic activation. Filed under Language comprehension and production tasks; engages 4 processes.

Sentence Comprehension ¶

Reading or listening to locally ambiguous sentences; reading-time disruptions and offline comprehension indexes syntactic reanalysis. Filed under Language comprehension and production tasks; engages 6 processes.

Serial Reaction Time ¶

Sequential key-press responses to cued locations; RT speedup on repeating vs random sequences indexes implicit sequence learning. Filed under Conditioning, reinforcement and implicit learning tasks; engages 5 processes.

Simon ¶

Non-spatial feature (e.g. color) dictates a left/right response while task-irrelevant stimulus location varies; RT cost on incongruent trials indexes spatial response conflict. Filed under Conflict and interference tasks; engages 5 processes.

Source Memory ¶

After studying items presented in distinct contexts (speaker, location, modality, time), participants judge each item’s encoding source; source accuracy dissociates contextual recollection from item familiarity. Filed under Recall and recognition memory tests; engages 5 processes.

Sternberg Item Recognition ¶

Short memory set followed by a probe; yes/no judgment of set membership. RT typically scales linearly with set size. Filed under Short-term and working memory tasks; engages 5 processes.

Stop-Signal ¶

Choice RT task in which an occasional stop signal requires response cancellation; stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) estimates inhibitory latency. Filed under Response inhibition and stopping tasks; engages 5 processes.

Stroop Color-Word ¶

Naming the ink color of color words while ignoring word meaning; RT and error costs on incongruent trials index selective attention and conflict control. Filed under Conflict and interference tasks; engages 6 processes.

Sustained Attention to Response ¶

Speeded responses to frequent non-targets with withholding on rare targets; commission errors and RT variability index sustained attention lapses. Filed under Response inhibition and stopping tasks; engages 5 processes.

Take Questionnaire ¶

Participant reads or hears a series of questionnaire items and records a response to each; the instrument administered is a parameter of the block, not a variation. Filed under Pseudo tasks: rest, fixation and self-report blocks; engages no process links (pseudo task).

Task Switching ¶

Alternation between two or more simple tasks on cue; switch-cost RT and errors index task-set reconfiguration. Filed under Rule use, planning and reasoning tasks; engages 4 processes.

Think/No-Think ¶

Cue words are presented with instructions to either retrieve or suppress their learned associate; later memory for suppressed items indexes retrieval-induced forgetting through inhibition. Filed under Memory control and prospective memory tasks; engages 5 processes.

Tower of London ¶

Rearrange colored beads on pegs to match a goal state in the minimum number of moves; pre-execution latency and move efficiency index planning. Filed under Rule use, planning and reasoning tasks; engages 5 processes.

Trail Making ¶

Paper-and-pencil sequencing: connect numbered circles (Part A) or alternate numbers and letters (Part B) as fast as possible. B−A difference indexes set switching. Filed under Rule use, planning and reasoning tasks; engages 5 processes.

Trust Game ¶

Two-stage exchange in which an investor transfers a fraction of an endowment (multiplied on receipt), and a trustee returns some fraction; amounts transferred index trust and reciprocity. Filed under Social cognition and social choice tasks; engages 5 processes.

Two-Stage Decision ¶

Sequential two-choice task with probabilistic transitions to second-stage states and drifting rewards; choice patterns dissociate model-based from model-free control. Filed under Conditioning, reinforcement and implicit learning tasks; engages 5 processes.

Ultimatum Game ¶

Proposer offers a division of an endowment; responder accepts or rejects. Rejection of unfair offers indexes inequity aversion and strategic punishment. Filed under Social cognition and social choice tasks; engages 4 processes.

Useful Field of View ¶

Brief central identification combined with peripheral localization under increasing distractor and divided-attention load; thresholds index processing speed and divided attention. Filed under Visual search and tracking tasks; engages 5 processes.

Verb Generation ¶

Produce a verb associated with each presented noun; indexes lexical-semantic retrieval and inhibition of prepotent responses, with well-known left-prefrontal activation. Filed under Language comprehension and production tasks; engages 5 processes.

Verbal Fluency ¶

Generate as many words as possible within a time limit matching a phonemic (letter) or semantic (category) constraint; production count and clustering/switching patterns index executive-lexical retrieval. Filed under Language comprehension and production tasks; engages 4 processes.

Virtual Morris Water Maze ¶

Navigate a virtual circular arena to find a hidden platform using distal spatial cues; latency and search patterns index allocentric spatial learning and navigation ability. Filed under Spatial cognition and navigation tasks; engages 5 processes.

Virtual Radial Arm Maze ¶

Virtual multi-arm maze in which participants retrieve rewards from each arm once; working-memory and reference-memory errors index spatial memory. Filed under Spatial cognition and navigation tasks; engages 4 processes.

Visual Masking ¶

A brief target is rendered invisible or reduced in visibility by a preceding or following mask; variants include metacontrast, paracontrast, pattern, forward, backward, common-onset, and object-substitution masking. Filed under Perceptual judgment and psychophysics tasks; engages 4 processes.

Visual Search ¶

Detection of a target in a display of distractors; search slopes across set size dissociate feature (parallel) from conjunction (serial) search. Filed under Visual search and tracking tasks; engages 5 processes.

Wason Selection ¶

Four cards with letters and numbers under a conditional rule; participants choose cards to turn over to test the rule. Indexes conditional reasoning and content effects. Filed under Rule use, planning and reasoning tasks; engages 3 processes.

Weapons Identification ¶

Speeded categorization of tools vs weapons primed by faces of varying race; congruence effects index implicit racial bias in perception. Filed under Conflict and interference tasks; engages 6 processes.

Wisconsin Card Sorting ¶

Sort cards by a hidden rule (color, form, or number) using only correct/incorrect feedback; after runs of correct sorts the rule silently switches. Perseverative errors index set-shifting. Filed under Rule use, planning and reasoning tasks; engages 5 processes.